Smile and Wave — and Keep on Driving

[My views are my own]

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something. You know why it is. To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking. It does not cost you anything. You have acquired the habit; you know the routine; you do not have to plan anything, and it frightens you with a hint of exertion to learn that you will have to do it a different way tomorrow.”

Woodrow Wilson

My mother, Betty Jean (aka BJ), is from Iowa. In the 1960s, she came to New York as a flight attendant, fell in love with my father, and never went back.

She tried her best to become a real New Yorker, but she hasn’t been able to shake her easygoing Midwestern Southern Baptist temperament.

Like most New Yorkers, she learned to be an aggressive driver. Even at the age of 79, she still flies down the highway in the left lane doing 80 in a 55.

But, unlike most New Yorkers, when she gets cut-off, rather than rolling down the window and giving the finger, she puts a huge smile on her face and waves like she’d just sold her first-prize pig at the Iowa State Fair.

The powerful lesson is that my mother almost never has to pick up the hammer to achieve her objectives.

Mostly, she just smiles and waves — and keeps on driving.

In corporate transformation, there are a hundred opportunities a day for misunderstanding, hurt feelings and conflict.

What I’ve learned from my mother’s approach is to have empathy, and to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Every time I’ve reacted in anger, it’s been destructive, and I’ve regretted it.

If you are interested in engaging further in this conversation, I’d love to go on the journey with you. Please subscribe to my FREE newsletter/blog. The link is at the top of the page on a desktop browser and at the bottom of the page on a mobile browser. Also, please follow me on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn, and post a comment below. I’d love to know what you think.

Trust & the Repeatable Transformation Playbook

[My views are my own]

For the last several months, I’ve been working on a manuscript to document my “repeatable playbook” of business transformation.

It’s required me to dive a lot deeper than I originally expected.

I started out by compiling and organizing a list of the tactics I’ve used.

At first, it was exhilarating. It felt like flipping through an old high school yearbook.

I quickly realized that the challenge with tactical transformation is that the cutting edge ideas of today quickly become business as usual.

As I pulled one mental thread after another, it became clear that the repeatable playbook of transformation (and the real source of value) is the people/human stuff.

In large organizations, especially those that have matrixed reporting structures, you can’t do it all yourself.

From my experience, the biggest reason transformation, turnaround and innovation efforts fail is because those leaders never build a posse. They end up alone, screaming into the wilderness — and nobody cares.

If you don’t get people on-side, you are going to be blocked at every move. While you may have buy-in from the center or top of the organization, it’s the people in the middle that actually run the business — and they don’t give a shit about your “brilliant ideas.”

For me, the starting point is always trust.

Corporations are packed full of politics, people with hidden agendas, and transactional relationships.

Quickly and radically establishing the envelope of trust has been my cornerstone for building kick-ass teams — and driving change.

There needs to be rapport, and a sense of protection if you want your teams to do big things, and to take risks.

If you are interested in engaging further in this conversation, I’d love to go on the journey with you. Please subscribe to my FREE newsletter/blog. The link is at the top of the page on a desktop browser and at the bottom of the page on a mobile browser. Also, please follow me on Twitter, connect with me on LinkedIn, and post a comment below. I’d love to know what you think.

Don’t Let the Shit-Birds Get You Down

[My views are my own].

My father (Big Al) has a favorite saying: “One of the secrets to success is to not let the shit-birds get you down.”

A shit-bird is someone that flutters overhead and drops negativity bombs.

He picked up this little gem at boot camp in the early 1960s; and he passed it along to me in the late 1980s.

I was a junior in high school, working as a bank teller.

This was before ATMs. So, at night, after the branch closed, the kids would work the drive-through windows.

During the holidays it was your worst nightmare. The line of cars would stretch down the street for hours.

By the time the customers arrived at the window, everyone was pissed off — and nasty.

One terrible evening, my drawer was off by $25, and I had to spend three hours tracking down the mistake. I got home at 11 o’clock totally exhausted; and I had school the next day.

I told my father that I was going to quit.

Big Al told me that quitting was not an option.

If I could learn to deal with shit-birds (like he’d learned in boot camp), I’d have a skill worth way more than the $5 an hour I was getting paid by the bank.

Our strategy was that when people got nasty, I’d match their negative energy with equal amounts of positive energy.

They’d get angry. I’d be really happy.

They’d blame. I’d apologize and tell them I totally understood.

They’d yell. I’d by magnanimous.

It became a game. I enlisted my friends at the branch. We started a betting pool to see who landed the worst customer.

And . . . we went from being really unhappy to laughing so hard we would fall to the ground.

It’s been over 30 years since I was a bank teller, and Big Al was right: “One of the secrets to success is to not let the shit-birds get you down.”

Oh . . . and make sure you tip well. People who do service jobs don’t get paid nearly enough to deal with all the assholes.